


Welcome to the Eleventh

by junko



Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-04 00:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Eleventh Division gang is all here... they're just waiting on the appearance of their newest member, Zabimaru.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to the Eleventh

**Author's Note:**

> For red*robin and any other fans of Zabimaru and Renji. 
> 
> This story takes place shortly after Renji's transfer to the Eleventh Division. It builds on my previous Zabimaru story "Fight in the Dog/Illusion of Strength," but you don't have to have read that to make sense of this one. 
> 
> Oh, and this takes place in the Eleventh, thus I must WARN for bad/rude language.

At some point, Renji started sleeping with Zabimaru, his zanpaktō. It started out of sheer exhaustion. Weeks after his transfer to the Eleventh, he was still falling onto his mat at the end of the day, his ears ringing with clang of steel and his body too battered and beaten to do anything more complicated than collapse, fully-clothed. Thus, they were never apart, except for those rare occasions when the entire squad descended on the sentō, the public bathhouse, and Captain Zaraki frightened off the respectable customers and bullied the attendant into ignoring the parade of tattoos, piercings, and body art.

This morning something woke Renji early. The sun hadn’t even risen. A heavy shade of purple barely tinted the sky. Summer heat, however, already made the barracks stuffy and ripe with the smell of men. He lay there for a moment, listening to the call of sparrows. After hearing nothing else, not even the light jangle of bells signaling the captain’s returning from a late-night toilet run, Renji rolled over with a grunt. He needed sleep or he was going to get his ass handed to him again today.

_Not today._

“Who’s there?” Renji propped himself up on his elbows and scanned the room to see who’d spoken. The voice hadn’t sounded like anyone who shared the unseated officer’s quarters with him. In fact, it’d sounded almost alien, deep like a bass drum and weirdly timbered.

No one else seemed to be awake. The rest of the crew were sprawled around the room, eyes closed, some snoring.

 _Yes, we’re hungry. It’s time to bite,_ a second voice hissed merrily.

_Call us out, Renji._

His left hand had strayed to Zabimaru automatically, and suddenly Renji knew exactly where the voices had originated. The entire zanpaktō thrummed with reistsu, spiritual pressure.

Renji smiled broadly, and then flopped back onto the bed roll. “Finally,” he breathed, and closed his eyes. “Thank you.”

 

#

 

Renji had known Zabimaru’s name for a long time, but for reasons known only the zanpaktō itself, it refused to show its true form in the Fifth Division. He’d tried asking what held Zabimaru back, but the only answer he’d ever received was “instinct.” But, for Renji that had been enough. What Zabimaru wanted, he wanted. It was as simple as that, even though it had almost cost him his career.

He was wondering if other people felt the same loyalty to their zapanktō as he made his way to the mess hall. A group of guys lounged on the porch, choosing to eat their breakfast outside in the shade of the portico. As Renji passed, he heard one of them say: “Bad news. I heard the captain woke up in a crappy mood.”

“How could anyone tell the difference?” joked a companion.

“Well, I guess he’s been raging around yelling about coming down to shake up the unseated ranks.”

“Himself?” one gulped.

“You mean us?” asked another nervously, “Fight Zaraki? Holy fuck, we’re all going to die.”

At his hip, Zabimaru rumbled happily.

“I’ll do it,” Renji volunteered, putting his hand on Zabimaru’s sheath reassuringly, letting the zanpaktō know that he got the message. “I’ll take on the captain.”

The group gathered at the steps turned to stare, wide-eyed at Renji. He could see the horror and disbelieving pity in their eyes. Then one of them laughed. “You? Well, I guess you’ve got a lot of experience lying flat on your back in the dirt, huh, Abarai?”

Zabimaru hissed.

“Yeah, yeah,” Renji said, shrugging off the insult, but straightening his shoulders none-the-less. He pinned the group under a hard stare. “Who’s with me, then? Any of you lot up for the challenge?”

Gazes slid away, feigning sudden interest in rice bowls.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Renji muttered as he went in search of his own breakfast. “Just don’t get in our way.”

 

#

 

The gossipers were wrong in one regard. The captain wasn’t so much in a **bad** mood, per se, as a gleefully violent one. Zaraki was itching for a fight, any fight, and had decided to work his way up from the bottom of the ranks.

A frighteningly powerful man, Zaraki towered over everyone -- even Renji, who was used to being one of the biggest people around. Plus the captain was broad like an ox with massive muscles and correspondingly intense spiritual pressure. In fact, the first few days in the Eleventh, Renji could hardly string two thoughts together so distractingly crushing was Zaraki’s reistsu.

Then, there was his crazy hair. Pulled up into black spikes and topped with bells, it looked like some kind of twisted demon’s crown. Add to that the wicked scar that cut down the entire length of his face on one side, the eye-patch on the other, and his tendency to find violence invigorating and funny, well… Renji found his earlier bravado evaporating.

If it wasn’t for the crowd’s shove and Zabimaru’s resolve, Renji might have considered shamefully bolting like a rabbit.

But, Zabimaru wanted this. He could hear the zanpaktō’s anxious, excited growls. So, fuck it, he might as well going to go down swinging.

 _Besides_ , Zabimaru said. _We can keep him at a distance._

_We’ll make him dance at the edge of a whip, the slash of the snake’s tail._

“Okay,” Renji said. Stepping forward into the dusty practice yard, he released the sword from its sheath with this thumb, “if you say so.”

“Who you talking to, boy?” Zaraki demanded.

“My greatest ally” Renji said, pulling out his zanpaktō and taking a stance. “Captain Zaraki, meet Zabimaru.”

 

#

 

“Stay down this time,” Zaraki commanded, over the shouts of the crowd. “I’ve decided you’re too interesting to waste.”

Renji let his trembling muscles relax, and he gratefully sank into the hard-packed ground. Reflecting on the fight, Renji thought was a damn fine showing, considering. Fuck, it had gone on a half-hour longer than anyone thought it would and had attracted the entire squad, even the seated officers, most of whom were still shouting for his blood or bravely booing the captain for having called for a halt.

If Zaraki wasn’t insane, Renji and Zabimaru might have had a chance of winning, too. Of course, it would have been nice to practice a bit more before having to face such a formidable opponent. But, honestly, Renji was pleased at how quickly he and Zabimaru learned to fight together. And, despite the beating they’d taken, Zabimaru was still strong enough to retain its released form. It was his own body that ultimately betrayed them, and Renji was ridiculously proud of his zanpaktō. He lay there in the dust, trying to breathe, and beamed stupidly at the beautiful toothed blade he held in his hand.

A shadow blocked the sun, as Zaraki crouched over Renji’s body. “Are you smiling? Are you seriously drooling blood in the dirt and grinning like an idiot?”

“I think he had fun, Kenny,” piped up the little pink-haired lieutenant, Yachiru Kusajishi, from where she peaked over the captain’s broad shoulder . “Like you did.”

“Yeah, I kind of did,” Zaraki noted. Sitting back on his heels, he casually rested his nicked and battered zanpaktō across his knee. “That was at least… unexpected. Tell me, boy, what the fuck were you doing with the unseated officers?”

“Waiting,” Renji managed to say.

“Waiting for what?”

“Waiting for today.” _Waiting to see Zabimaru._

“Huh,” Zaraki said, pulling himself to his feet with a grunt. “I think I remember you now. You’re that troublemaker foisted on me from the Fifth, aren’t you?”

“Oh! A friend! Then we should invite him to dine at our table tonight,” Yachiru suggested, with a clap of her little hands. She danced around in front of Renji’s half-glazed over eyes, the slap of her sandals spattering blood with every hop. “Let’s have a birthday party for Fang Tooth!”

Zaraki down looked over his shoulder for a moment, and then shrugged. “Try not to die before then. We should talk.”

 

#

 

Renji felt conspicuous at the captain’s table, especially with Yachiru sitting in his lap talking to Zabimaru like it were a teddy bear invited to a tea party. “Do you like sweets, Mr. Fang Tooth?” she asked.

“Uh,” Renji said, finding that he was expected to answer on his zanpaktō’s behalf, “Zabimaru will eat anything, but I think maybe a favorite is meat, you know, like an animal might enjoy.”

The lieutenant twisted in his lap, and blinked her big eyes at Renji, taken aback for a moment. She put a little finger on her lip, frowning and considering very seriously. Then she suddenly brightened. “Oh, okay! I’ll get some dumplings!”

She ran off towards the kitchens happily.

“You didn’t talk down to her,” Zaraki noted. He regarded Renji intently for a moment, and then nodded his approval. The captain helped himself to a rice ball from the middle of the table. Renji noticed no one served anyone else; it was an against-custom-free-for-all, much like the entire Division. The captain added, “So tell me, Abarai, why does Aizen have it out for you?”

“I didn’t know he did,” Renji said. “But I did kick his lieutenant.”

“I know. That’s why I agreed to the transfer. I don’t like doing favors for other captains, especially since they seem to think I’ll take any garbage they toss out. But, I’ll pick up a stray that has fight in him,” Zaraki said, taking a moment to consider while he chewed his food. “But Aizen made a point of telling me not to expect much from you; not to bother seating you. He’s a kidō master. He must have known you had the reistsu to call out your zanpaktō. So why would he do that?”

 _Because he lies,_ hissed Zabimaru.

“I don’t know,” Renji said, much less willing to commit casual libel than his sword.

“Come on,” said the Third Seat Ikkaku Madarame elbowing Renji in the arm, “You fucked his woman, right?”

“Or his boy,” Fifth Seat Yumichika Ayasegawa added quietly around a sip of sake.

The captain watched Renji during this exchange. “If anyone did that to me I’d kill him, not transfer him. Anyway, I don’t think Aizen has either-- at least none that really matter to him,” Zaraki said. “What does seem to turn him on is schemes and politics. But I can’t guess the advantage to keeping you down, Abarai. Do you have something on Aizen? Some secret?”

Zabimaru murmured unhappily at all this talk of Aizen. The only thing Renji “had” was that Zabimaru disliked his former captain and he couldn’t see how that amounted to much, so he shook his head, “If anything, I owe him for not court martialing me.”

“Owe him?” Zaraki frowned deeply for a long moment, and then took a huge gulp of sake. After draining it, he slammed the empty bowl down hard on to the table. “I fucking hate politics. But I tell you what I hate more: being played, taken for a fool. Consider yourself seated, Abarai. Where you end up is up to you. But I think you and Mr. Fang Tooth will do fine.”

At his side, Zabimaru purred happily.

“Dumplings!” cried the little lieutenant as she put a steaming plate nearly as big as herself into the middle of the table. Into a few, she had stuck birthday candles. “Now, let’s sing Happy Birthday to Mr. Fang Tooth!”

And, in the most surreal moment of Renji’s career, they all did. Even the captain.


End file.
